What a Possible Fox and Marvel Studios Team-Up Would Mean to the MCU

Fans are Hoping to See Their Favorite Marvel Characters Moving to the MCU

By Allen Marcon, CP Contributor Tuesday, June 28, 2016

One of the biggest problems that plagues the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that Marvel Studios does not own the cinematic rights to all of their characters. Hence, Marvel Studios had to build its reputation from lesser known characters.

While characters like Iron Man and Captain America are well-known today, technically, they are not the top characters in Marvel comic books. That title belongs to characters such as Wolverine, The X-Men and Spiderman.

The cinematic rights to these characters where sold off to several movie studios in the late 1990's and early 2000's when Marvel had to declare bankruptcy. Wolverine, the X-Men and The Fantastic Four all went to Fox, while Spiderman was sold off to Sony.

While Spiderman has already made his debut in "Captain America: Civil War" and is set to mak his own solo film later next year called "Spiderman: Homecoming," fans are still hoping the same fate could be said for the X-Men and maybe the Fantastic Four.

While still a rumor, talks between Marvel Studios and Fox have supposedly began because of the success of Spiderman in "Captain America: Civil War." So what could a possibly mean to the MCU if Fox where to allow characters to crossover?

Storylines

The X-Men have a long history with the MCU's top team, The Avengers, with several of the X-Men joining at certain points in time. Characters such as Wolverine and Beast have given their support to the team in the past. Several of the X-Men where even part of the "Infinity Gauntlet" story arc in the comics, which is set to be the end game of Marvel's phase 3 movies.

Another storyline that would be made possible is the "Avengers vs. X-Men" storyline, where the two teams fought over the control or destruction of the Phoenix Entity.

However, let's not forget about Deadpool as well. He has constantly come into contact with the Avengers and could easily be integrated into the story at any point in time.

How Soon Could This Happen?

Unfortunately, most of Fox-owned characters are too major to suddenly place in the MCU. Each character would have to be carefully inserted into a storyline or film. As it stands, Marvel would not have enough space for the new characters until at least the end of Phase 3 when the current story arc ends.

Phase 4's end story I still not fully realized as it is many years in the future, so this would be the best time for new characters to show up. Currently, only Spiderman has made it back to the MCU, but fans will not give up hope that maybe one day their favorite characters will return home.